POLITICS ’88 : North Dakota Voters Again Reject Lottery

North Dakotans rejected a lottery for the second time in 18 months Tuesday, while Virginians chose Democrat L. F. Payne Jr. as their newest congressman.

With 77% of the North Dakota vote in, the lottery was opposed by 41,505 voters, or 59%, and favored by 28,391 voters, or 41%.

“It would seem to me (the vote is) a decisive expression of the will of the people, and I would hope that the proponents would accept the decision of the voters of North Dakota,” former Gov. Arthur Link said.

The lottery was defeated in November, 1986, the first time a state had failed to approve a state-run lottery. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have lotteries.

Backers said a lottery would raise $7 million in new revenue for the state, which is struggling through a depressed economy.

Besides the lottery vote, North Dakotans also had the last-in-the-nation presidential primary. But because of its late date no Democrats filed, and on the Republican side the ballot listed only Vice President George Bush and Mary Jane Rachner, a retired teacher who says the spirits of her late mother and grandmother told her to run for President.

With 16 GOP delegates at stake, Bush was piling up 94% of the vote.

In Virginia, Payne, the developer of a ski and golf resort, defeated the Republican candidate, former White House aide Linda Arey, in a special election in the southside 5th District. He succeeds Rep. W. C. (Dan) Daniel, a conservative Democrat who died of a heart attack in January while serving his 10th term.

With all of the votes counted, Payne had 55,406 votes, or 59%, to Arey’s 38,086 votes, or 41%.

Bush Backed Arey

Bush came to campaign for Arey on Sunday in Danville, a textile and tobacco center. Payne stressed his ties to the state’s Democratic Party and received backing from Gov. Gerald L. Baliles.

In Maine’s southern 1st District, Linda Bean-Jones was edged by senatorial aide Edward S. O’Meara for the GOP nomination to oppose Democratic Rep. Joseph E. Brennan, a former two-term governor. With 96% of the vote counted, O’Meara had 15,313 votes, or 52%, and Bean-Jones had 14,102 votes, or 48%.

Bean-Jones, granddaughter of outdoors outfitter L. L. Bean and founder of a defunct conservative publication known as the Maine Paper, tapped her personal wealth for her first political race, spending $455,000 out of her own pocket. O’Meara, a longtime district aide to Sen. William S. Cohen, spent about $60,000.

Bean-Jones stressed her business background as a real estate agent and entrepreneur, contrasting it with O’Meara’s years as a government insider.

South Carolina also had congressional primaries, and in the only challenge to an incumbent, three-term Democratic Rep. Robin Tallon easily turned back retired postal worker Luther Lighty in the 6th District. Tallon was receiving 90% of the vote to Lighty’s 10%.